


Golden Hour

by allthegoodnamesaretakendammit



Series: Precious [2]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Age Difference, Confessions, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Forbidden Love, Genderswap, Guilt, Healing, Older Man/Younger Woman, Rule 63, Sex Pollen Aftermath, minor reference to Daddy Kink, real talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 05:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15066404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthegoodnamesaretakendammit/pseuds/allthegoodnamesaretakendammit
Summary: “I’m pretty sure my mom thinks I have a secret boyfriend now.”“Do you?” She blinks at him, so he repeats himself: “Do you have... a secret boyfriend?”





	Golden Hour

Danny is spending twilight hidden away in one of her new favorite haunts: the rooftop of Nasty Burger. She lets her legs dangle over the orange-lit wall and listens to the screech of birds and honking from rush hour traffic like it’s fine music. Maybe one of her professors is down there, fighting to get home in time to watch the evening news. She spares a thought for the homework piling up next to her bed and nods to herself, deciding to make a dent in it tonight. Amity Park Community College might be for chumps, but she’s going to make solid B’s this semester, dammit. She’s going to make it happen. Just... after she’s done getting a breather up here where everything is golden.

 

Somehow, it seems completely unsurprising when Vlad, in full Plasmius-mode, floats up to the ledge and sits down a couple feet away from her. And they just sit there watching the sunset.

 

She should be switched into panic mode for a million reasons, most of all because she’s presently human. Well, _half._ Maybe she’s cool with it because she’s been so relaxed lately. After all, it’s been a quiet month. It’s been quiet since the days leading up New Year’s, actually. That’s probably what makes it so easy to sink back into watching the sun disappear behind city hall, scrawling a golden line along the bottom of the sky. The sound of squealing brakes and pigeons saying goodbye to each other really completes the moment, she thinks.

 

At long last, Danny says, “How was Christmas?”

 

“Acceptable. Skulker left a plasma cannon under my tree.” Danny whistles, idly hoping that it won’t end up pointed at her later. “And yourself?”

 

“Fine. Jazz gave me a huge bean-bag. Mom and Dad wouldn’t shut up about whether or not Santa Claus is real, though. It’s, like, an annual tradition.”

 

“Oh, he’s real. He’s a powerful, nigh-omniscient spirit,” he informs Danny sourly, and she twists around to stare at him, gaping.

 

“What’s with the sour face? Did he give you a lump of coal?”

 

“Several sacks of it, in fact,” he tells her, and she cracks up.

 

“I guess that’s how you know he’s the real deal.”

 

“Indeed.”

 

The pause in conversation is shot through with yowling alley cats and an airplane roaring overhead. And then: “What about the Easter Bunny?”

 

“What about him?” Vlad says, smirking, which is how she knows he’s fucking with her.

 

So she looks up at him with big, shiny eyes, whispering in her softest voice, “You mean... there’s no Easter Bunny?” He stares back at her, struck blank, seeming not to know how to break the news to her. She ruins it when she starts laughing at the stupid look on his face, which quickly contorts into an exasperated frown. “You know, for an evil guy, you’re pretty gullible.”

 

He glares at her sharply and says, “You’re rather easy to take advantage of, yourself. Given our last meeting in the Ghost Zone—”

 

She flaps a hand at him to try and shut him up before he starts guilt tripping himself where she has to watch. “Come on, dude. That’s _not_ how that went down.”

 

He glares at her with literal plasma fire gathering in his eyes, as if it had been building there every day since they’d last seen each other. His hands curl themselves into tight fists and his throat works, as if his rage was something he could try to swallow. Through that, he chokes out, “I... forced myself on y—”

 

“I think you’re conveniently forgetting about who had to persuade you to stick around in the first place.” It really sucks when Danny has to be the voice of reason. Her brain isn’t built for these kinds of arguments. Still, she must be making some kind of headway because he turns away from her, his hands clenching and unclenching themselves in his lap. So she tells him, “Look, I get it if you’re mad at yourself for doing something you can’t undo. But it’s not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault. We got roofied into it by a frigging flower. Life goes on.”

 

“Perhaps,” he bit out. “But that loss of control is infuriating in its own right.”

 

“It’s okay to be mad. But do you have to be mad at _you?_ ”

 

He’s silent. After another full five minutes of listening to those alley cats, Danny rubs her knees and says, “It was actually really fun for me. I’m sorry if it was miserable for you.”

 

He exhales deeply and says, “I take it you haven’t informed Madeline or that miserable oaf you call your father?”

 

“Hey man, don’t talk about yourself like that.” He glares at her, unamused. So she leans back on her elbows and says, “No. When you think about it, it doesn’t actually have a lot to do with them. Danny Phantom and Plasmius had sex in the Ghost Zone. So what? Who cares what a couple of ghosts do? I mean, as long as they’re on the other side of the portal where they can’t hurt any normies.”

 

“I suppose,” he muses.

 

“Those hickies took forever to heal, though. I’m pretty sure my mom thinks I have a secret boyfriend now.”

 

“Do you?” She blinks at him, so he repeats himself: “Do you have... a secret boyfriend?”

 

She blinks at him some more, still mystified. When he looks like he’s about to explode, she shakes it off long enough to answer, “No.”

 

“I see.” Well how nice for him, because she sure as shit doesn’t.

 

Frustrated, she changes tacks. “So what did you end up doing with the rest of the flower spores?”

 

“Destroyed them,” he answers easily.

 

“Really? You could have done something really impressive with that stuff. Mutate them into a giant flower ghost or something.”

 

“It wasn’t worth the risk.”

 

It seems to her like that’s not the only risk he’s afraid of taking. So she takes a deep breath full of twilight, looks him dead in the eye, and just says it: “I want to do it again. To be with you like that, I mean.”

 

Vlad puts his head in his hands. Poor guy. “But we can’t,” he says to the distant sidewalk.

 

“Right.”

 

“Because of age and conflicting world-views and complicated interpersonal history and everything else.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

Silence. Sunset. Broken glass shining on the sidewalk. The wide-open sky.

 

“That was probably the best hour of my life.”

 

Vlad gives a ragged sigh, sits up enough to drag his hands over his face, and says, “Mine too.”

 

So she steals one of those gloved hands and holds it between both of hers. “You didn’t ask for this.” Something changes in his expression, something tiny and crucial. Like he really believes her when she says it this time. “It was pretty messed up, but it was also pretty great, all things considered.” She smiles at him and concludes, “Just like the way you’ve been keeping things quiet in Amity Park lately.”

 

“I’ve done no such thing,” he scoffs, but he doesn’t pull his hand away.

 

“Oh? So Skulker just _decided_ to stop bounty hunting and start policing rowdy ghosts for free instead?”

 

Vlad stops denying it and grumbles, “You’ll be happy to know that he’s not as good at it as you are.”

 

“ _Nobody’s_ as good at as I am.” He narrows his eyes at her, as if he’s about to say that _he’d_ be better at it if he were so inclined, but thinks better of it at the last second.

 

So she just smiles at him--because that always seems to infuriate him in the best way. But this time, when she smiles at him like that, his face undergoes another one of those tiny changes that transforms it somehow. Danny has to look away from him, feeling something raw well up at the sight of it. She ends up staring at the flickering Nasty Burger sign, the neon of it burning her retinas in a soothingly familiar sort of way.

 

He catches her eyeing it and says out of the blue, “This place is named after a movie, you know.”

 

“What? Really?”

 

“Yes,” he answers, his fingers flexing against hers. “Terrible film. Still, someone established a restaurant in its honor. Terrible food, but people still eat it. I suppose we’re all allowed to have a fondness for terrible things.”

 

“Yeah?” she says, scooting a little closer to him just for the hell of it.

 

“Yes,” he agrees. Then he clears his throat and begins, “I’m… not a good man--”

 

“ _Ugh,_ ” she answers feelingly, already sick of hearing him beat himself up. It’s sad, _and_ it’s boring. She protests by falling back against the concrete rooftop with a whump, her legs still dangling over the edge. Vlad comes closer and leans in like he’s worried that she gave herself a concussion. Danny turns to look at him, his head haloed by what’s left of the sunset. His gloved hand reaches out as if to check the back of her head, faltering just before touching her. So she grabs it between both hands again and keeps it safe over her heart. They really bring out the worst, cheesiest parts of each other.

 

Vlad stares down at his own hand, just watching it rise and fall as she breathes under it. Then he’s looking at her mouth--and _of course_ she forgot to put on chapstick today. All in all, she’s unsure of the picture she makes, splayed out on the roof and waiting to see what happens next.

 

She doesn’t have to wonder about it anymore when he licks his lips with the just the tip of his tongue and says, “May I--?”

 

The next thing Danny knows, she has one hand fisted in his collar and he’s leaning down to kiss her faster than she can pull him. Their mouths meet just like that: bright and quick, brought on by gravity itself. It feels like a cosmic kind of thing, the way his hand cups her jaw and how their lips make those ultra-soft sounds on the second kiss. It’s not their first kiss, but it’s just as good as.

 

When she opens her eyes again, his free hand is planted next to her head, propping him up as his eyes rove over her face like he’s looking for a single sign of the word _no._

 

She tugs on his collar again, and he goes with it. A hair’s breadth away from the next kiss, she wonders how silly their legs must look, sticking out over the ledge at odd angles. And then thought is gone, gone with everything except for the way he’s cupping her face again and her own hands are in his hair somehow and he sighs into her mouth when she pulls on it a little. He’s not as warm as he was when he was feverish and wild in the Ghost Zone, but he’s still pretty goddamn warm. Warm enough to leave her lips tingling when he finally remembers that she needs to breathe. Warm enough to leave that glow still settling over her skin when his thumb swipes over her cheek.

 

This time, when she opens her eyes, twilight is over. The world is bathed in blue; the man on top of her especially. Maybe they’ll spend the rest of the night up here. Maybe they won’t. Either way, she wants to see him when the sun is up again--she wants to see his face in broad daylight, still looking down at her like that.

 

“Hey,” she says. “Are you free tomorrow?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can thank TattooedFanPerson for this sequel, and perhaps for the threequel as well. Make sure to thank them with cake. And a shout out to DLasagne for being a wonderful beta!
> 
> To the best of my knowledge, the Nasty Burger in Danny Phantom really was inspired by the 1993 film. If you'd like to stay up to date on when the next and final installment of the series is coming out, check out my tumblr at letalavelle.tumblr.com.


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